Brosh's site, which revolves around personal stories "told very dramatically (hyperbolically, even)" from her real life, has 339,000 Facebook fans and has been considered among one of the funniest sites on the Internet. In 2011, Brosh signed a book deal with Touchstone, a division of Simon & Schuster, based on the blog.

Continue Reading...

That said, occasionally the right person starts the right Twitter parody account at the right time, and the commentary can take on a life of its own. The result: an account that can retain followers long after the prompting event or person has disappeared from headlines.

Here are 6 accounts based on memes well past their Internet prime that still making it work:

1. The Bronx Zoo's Cobra, which caused a panic when it disappeared from the Zoo in 2011, soon resurfaced on Twitter, gaining thousands of followers overnight. Although it was soon recovered in real life, the parody account still updates frequently and retains almost 200K followers:

[embedtweet id="318797186991288320"]

[embedtweet id="315230065459863552"]

Continue Reading...

Actually, that should be "Don't use sentence fragments!" so as not to break its own rule. What is a sentence fragment? Anything that looks like a sentence — starts with a capital letter and ends with a period — but is not a syntactically complete standard sentence.

This "rule" has some validity as a general guideline, especially to help adolescents get over some of their more atrocious writing habits. But respected authors and well-educated writers have always used exceptions to the "rule" for good effect. Here are some examples:

Sentences without verbs

It's obvious that a sentence needs a verb. Right? If not, why not?

Did you see what I just did there? I didn't need to say "Is that right? If it is not, why is it not?" You can sometimes get by without restating things. This is called ellipsis, and is found in many a well-polished work of prose. No need for extra information. The shorter the better. Out with the longwinded and in with the concise.

Continue Reading...

Under the headline "This Is A Tragedy—Does It Really Matter Exactly How Many People Died Or What Any Of The Details Are?" the Onion writes as a New York Post columnist:

Continue Reading...

Leadbelly sang about Jumping Judy:

Well, jumping Little Judy, she was a mighty fine girl.
Judy brought jumping to this whole round world

Dylan Thomas liked to get juiced and tell the prettiest girl at the party, "I want to jump your bones."

J has some weird sexual je-ne-sais-quoi mojo, some humor (jests, jibes, jokes, jocularity), some sweetness (jams and jellies, Jujubes and Jujifruit) and some heat (joules).

Mick Jagger just sounds randy. And mint julep just sounds debauched, as The Clovers revealed in the 1952 hit "One Mint Julep":

I didn't know what I was doin'
I had to marry all day screwing ...
One mint julep was the cause of it all.

Continue Reading...

My reason was different, and possibly absurd. I wanted to try water fasting because I have a lifelong fear of being stranded on a desert island – or in an apocalyptic wasteland -- and starving. Admittedly, I’m afraid of practically everything, but this thought seemed to have at least a shred of rationality. If starving is not something you currently fear, read “Survivor Type,” the Stephen King story about what happens if you are stranded on a desert island without food, and get back to me.

Accordingly, if you pose that “What three things would you take to a desert island with you” question, my mind immediately goes to objects that would help me make a fire, and purify water and spear fish. By all means, you should take your beloved copy of Proust with you. I hope it’s delicious. I will be taking skinning knives.

I imagine I wouldn’t last long on my desert island. But how long? Would I die in the first day or could I possibly survive a week? Up until the end of the 19thcentury it was believed that people died after 10 days without food. They don’t. Today it’s believed to be somewhere between 28 and 73 days, depending on the level of hydration. Surely I could make it a few days.

Continue Reading...

Thanks to its success, Kimmel has followed up "Movie: The Movie" with "Movie: The Movie 2."

"When you have a success in Hollywood," Kimmel explains, "The only thing you can do is cheapen it with a sequel."

Continue Reading...

IN THE FIRST SEASON of the recently shuttered sitcom 30 Rock, Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon, attractive faux-spinster and noted bossypants-in-charge, finds herself in a standoff with the writing staff. Before long there is mutiny afoot, and her underlings become violent. “Okay, fine,” Lemon says after a water bottle whizzes past her face. “Get it out of your system.” A curious barrage of workaday items proceeds to fly in her direction, including a grapefruit, some cheese puffs, running shoes, a Wiffle-ball bat, and finally — yes — a microwave. Lemon has met her threshold. “Hey, nothing that plugs in, you guys! Nothing that could really hurt me!”

“Nothing that plugs in” is an excellent, sensible rule, funny in its roundabout specificity, but it’s funny only because the microwave misses Liz Lemon’s slender frame, crashing instead into some piece of soundstage drywall. Now imagine Melissa McCarthy in the same scenario — cheese balls flying hither and thither, a microwave shuttling past her head — and picture the punchline this time. Chances are it’s less about a new rule and more about over-retaliation: McCarthy sees your microwave and raises you a flatscreen.

Continue Reading...

Course Description 
In this class, we will analyze some of World Literature’s greatest short novels in an attempt to interrogate the essence of plot and character while reading as few words as possible. Each class session will begin with a student presentation of 15 to 20 minutes, so we’re looking at an effective class time of about an hour. I’d love to give you a five-minute break halfway through the period, with the tacit understanding that we actually blow 15, but then I’d have to pretend I didn’t notice when 36% of you didn’t bother to come back. Or I’d have to pass around the attendance sheet again, which is a major pain in the ass.

After the student presentation, which should cover structure and theme but will seldom rise above rote plot summary, I will provide whatever historical and biographical context is both critical to our understanding of the book and available on Wikipedia. But I will sound so authoritative and well-versed that you’d never know this, even if you had the book’s Wikipedia page open on the laptop you’re pretending to take notes on, rather than your Facebook newsfeed.

Continue Reading...

As a straight married man who has never spent any time as a straight single woman looking for love, I approached “I Don’t Care About Your Band,” Klausner’s darkly comic memoir of dating, as a kind of dispatch from a secret and enticing land.

Among the things I learned while listening:

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

Seinfeld talks about how he constructed a joke about Pop Tarts and, of course, his trademark "nothing." "In my world, the wronger something feels, the righter it is," he says. "So to waste so much time on something this stupid--that felt good to me."

Here's the Pop Tart joke from a 2010 performance on David Letterman's "Late Show" (at 1:19)--which is still a work in progress:

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

It Books executive editor Mark Chait, who helped negotiate the deal, said of Saget, "I've been dying to do a book with Bob ever since he almost made me p-ss my pants with laughter in 'The Aristocrats,'" a reference to the 2005 documentary in which Saget, along with 99 other comics, improvised perverse and absurd renditions of a classic Vaudeville joke. "It is now well-known that Bob Saget is very different from the neurotically conservative Danny Tanner character he played on 'Full House.' With this book he truly lets it all hang out -- the full monty of his crazy self, his dirty humor and unique personality," Chait said.

The AP notes that the book will have "filth and craziness and stories of such comedians as Richard Pryor and Don Rickles." And, if Saget's tweets are any indication, "it may get dirty."

h/t THR

Continue Reading...

The Times claims that the issue wasn't the humor, however. It was the use of trademark Gothic style "T," which the parody account adopted and edited to include a beret. Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for the Times, told Poynter, “We’re not seeking to disable the account however it is important to The Times that our copyright is protected and that it is clear to all users of Twitter that parody accounts or other unofficial Times accounts are not affiliated nor endorsed by The Times.”

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

Trillin talked about his approach to humor in an interview with Mother Jones last year:

Continue Reading...